“Is everything okay?” Morgan peered around the edge of the computer screen.
Normally Kate’s smile was as bright and welcoming as a model in a toothpaste commercial, but today the assistant branch manager’s hands were trembling, her mouth stretched into a thin line as she kept glancing at the clock.
“Slow morning for the computers,” Kate said with a lack of conviction. “Needs a few extra minutes I guess. Being temperamental.”
Morgan couldn’t help but swallow hard as she looked at the last of Nemesis’ cash sitting beside the small pile of checks that included the one she’d picked up from Randolph less than thirty minutes before. As terrified as she was to part with the last of the ill-gotten funds—Lord only knew what alarms she might be triggering—her determination to finally set the accounts right overrode her doubts. From here on, everything where the center was concerned was going to be aboveboard, every penny accounted for, every moment notarized. Her life was about to head into fast-forward and she had to do whatever it took to keep things running smoothly. For not being much of a gambler, she was taking the biggest risk of her life, but if it paid off . . .
Temperamental seemed an appropriate description for how Morgan felt today. Aside from a few terse texts from Gage, she hadn’t heard from him since their argument yesterday morning.
While the money from selling her grandmother’s jewelry had set her free in one way, she had yet to find a way to come clean with Gage without exposing the foundation to a criminal investigation.
She should be on top of the world. Everything she’d worked for was within her grasp, and yet—
No. She’d found a solution to her one problem. She’d figure this one out, too. Of course, first she had to get him to talk to her.
Maybe his lack of communication last night was his passive-aggressive way of showing her she did need him, that she couldn’t do everything alone.
She didn’t need the extra lesson. In fact, his silence felt like overkill. But she got the message. Loud and clear. “Sorry,” Kate said again, her eyes skittering to the office door on the back wall, and she restacked the cash. “I know you’re in a rush.”
“Actually, it’s fine. One of my lighter days.” Once she was free and clear of the accounting two-step she’d been dancing the last few months, she was treating herself to a few hours off by picking up Brandon’s birthday present before meeting Sheila for lunch—Morgan’s idea—at Sheila’s favorite café downtown.
Not that she wasn’t keeping an attentive ear out for her phone. Lydia hadn’t had a good night and had been running a low-grade fever, which was never a good sign, and Kelley had had one of her rare temper tantrums. Chernobyl had nothing on a Kelley Black meltdown. Morgan’s usually precious, precocious pixie had been sent to bed without dessert or a story, which incurred a second round of migraine-inducing screams.
At least the entire house now knew not to touch any of Kelley’s princess dresses for fear of ripping a hole—however unintentionally—in the hem.
Morgan tapped her phone awake and tried to dispel the disappointment rippling through her belly when she didn’t find a new text from Gage.
She’d try again as soon as those missing Nemesis cards became inconsequential. As soon as the last of the money was repaid, which would be any second now.
“Okay, looks like we’re good.” Kate’s smile wobbled and her gaze skipped over Morgan’s as she handed her the deposit receipt.
The second Morgan saw the balance on the account, the stress of the last six months vanished. All the money was accounted for, where it should be. Just in time for the audit.
“Thanks, Kate. Have a great day.” She would have boogied out of the bank if she didn’t think it might end up on YouTube. The second the sun hit her face, Morgan lifted her eyes and basked in the feeling of rebirth. Finally.
Everything was going to be okay.
***
From his spot wedged into the corner of the microscopic security center next to the bank manager’s office, Gage concentrated on keeping his face blank as Morgan exited the bank.
He’d spent a sleepless night staring alternately between Barney Miller reruns and the text messages from Morgan that slowed to a trickle as the evening wore on.
He’d replied to the first few before having to stop himself. He had to let this play out, had to let her prove herself innocent. He wouldn’t put it past Kolfax to continue this witch hunt by claiming Gage had warned her off. Better to keep any communication between them nonexistent, if only for a few hours.
If only it wasn’t killing him.
But it would be worth it once Gage threw Kolfax’s failure in his face. Maybe throw in his fist for good measure. “What is taking that assistant manager so long?” Kolfax watched Kate saunter toward the office as if her actions weren’t dictated by a federal warrant.
As far as Gage could tell, Kolfax didn’t make friends anywhere he went it. Agent Marcus, a middle-aged man with a cowlick and ruddy complexion, along with his partner, a young woman around Morgan’s age whose name Gage hadn’t caught, looked as if they’d rather be hanged from their toes over a fire-ant hill than be stuck on this operation.
The situation wasn’t helped when Kolfax had the bank manager open two hours early because Kolfax hadn’t done his research and wasn’t aware—or more likely didn’t believe—that Morgan stuck to her schedule like a fly to flypaper. Gage sauntering in five minutes before Morgan arrived hadn’t improved Kolfax’s cranky mood.
Did wonders for Gage’s though.
When the assistant manager did knock on the door, Kolfax snatched the cash from her with a curse word Gage was sure even Morgan wouldn’t have dared utter.
“You’re welcome, Agent Asshole.” Kate shot Gage a look as if to ask if he was going to do something to stop this, but he couldn’t let himself react.
Instead, Gage nodded his thanks and closed the door behind her. “How long before we—”
“Shut up,” Kolfax snapped.
“We just have to type the serial numbers into the program,” Marcus said, as if Kolfax didn’t exist, his fingers flying faster than Gage could ever hope to type. “Shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen—”
Both the agents’ computer screens flashed red lines. The female agent snatched her hands from the keyboard as if she’d been burned. “We have a match.”
Gage’s body went numb. His head roared as if he’d been dropped into the middle of the ocean. His heart pounded in his ears like a gavel in an empty courtroom. “What? That can’t be right. Check it again.”
Gage couldn’t have felt more ill if he’d eaten a table full of bad sushi. He moved forward, but Kolfax slapped his hand against his chest, a mingled look of glee and triumph on the agent’s face. “No need. I was right. Your girlfriend’s in this up to her—”
Gage tuned him out, watching, praying as the agents typed in different serial numbers. Same result.
“I’m sorry, Inspector.” Marcus glanced over his shoulder. “The money is definitely a match to the funds supplied by the FBI.”
Gage couldn’t do anything but stare at the screens, at the blinking red lines that screamed of Morgan’s deception. Her lies. Her crimes.
“No.” Gage shook his head, unable to dislodge the bass drum pounding in his head. “No, there’s got to be some explanation. Her brother died from cancer, for Christ’s sake.” He’d held her when she’d cried about the little boy she couldn’t help, watched her with Kelley and Lydia and Brandon. This wasn’t the Morgan he knew. Morgan wasn’t a criminal.
“People like her are the cancer, Juliano. Guess you just had to learn the hard way.” He flipped open his phone. “Yeah, Estelle, Judge Walker owes me a favor. Can you tell him I need a federal arrest warrant for Morgan Tremayne ASAP? Yeah.” Kolfax glanced down at his watch, frowned for a moment, then shrugged. “Which means we should have the warrant by five?” He looked at Gage. “Perfect. Thanks.” He hung up without breaking eye contact. “You say a word to her about this, you warn her or her family in any way, and your career is over. And in case you don’t care about that, I’ll make sure to bring that frat-boy D.A. of yours down with you.”
The second Kolfax went for the door, Gage considered coldcocking him from behind.
“Don’t,” Marcus said under his breath, catching Gage’s arm as he closed the door behind Kolfax. “Alice, you want to leave, I won’t blame you, but he needs to hear—”
“Oh, please, Marcus, like I don’t know what’s going on? Kolfax has to close this case,” Alice said without blinking. “He approved the three million for the drug buy. Without authorization. That operation was supposed to be the case that made his career. He doesn’t track down the missing money, he doesn’t make this lead pay off, he’s done in the agency for good.”
“Judge Walker’s going to issue that warrant,” Marcus confirmed. “But he never comes into the office before four on a Tuesday,” Marcus confirmed. “If you’re right, if there’s something else to this, anything else, you’ve got a little over four hours to prove it.”
***
“I don’t know what I’m angrier about.” Evan paced the end of the task force’s conference room, shirtsleeves rolled up, hair askew. The normally composed D.A. was popping apart like a set of Lego bricks and getting on Gage’s last nerve. “That Morgan did it or that Kolfax was right.”
“I’m going with Kolfax,” Bouncer muttered, hobbling around the room as she sorted through the file on the Miami operation. “I haven’t met Morgan, but I trust Gage’s judgment. He never would have gotten involved with her if he suspected her of something like this.”
“You have heard the expression ‘love is blind,’ right?” Rojas’s question drew Gage back into the conversation.
“Love is blind, but it’s not stupid. Even if she did do something, I know she’s not linked to any drug cartel.” Hell, he’d be surprised if she even knew what one was. But there was something.
“Well, we’ve got”—Evan glanced at the clock—“three hours and forty minutes at most.”
“Any chance we can get some ears in Kolfax’s office?” Gage asked him as he came out of his fog. “Someone you’ve spoken with over there in the last couple of weeks, just so we know what they’re doing and when?”
“Yeah, I can do that. Bouncer, where’s that file with the FBI numbers Kolfax was so generous with?”
“Here.” How Bouncer located it beneath twenty other files, Gage had no idea.
“Use my office,” Gage said, but Evan was already headed in that direction. “Okay, now that he’s out of the way, somebody start throwing out ideas. We know the money Morgan deposited is part of the buy money from the FBI sting in Miami. How did she get it?” He knew he sounded cold, but detached was the only way he was going to get through this. The only way he’d get Morgan through it.
“According to the file, the first batch of cash she deposited was six months ago,” Peyton said. “Let’s start a time line. New board?”
Gage flipped the board with the Cunningham burglary details, grabbed a dry erase marker, and drew the line. “Call out the other deposits she made.” He made notations for each one, took a step away so they could all stare at the information. “Anyone see anything?” Gage felt Morgan’s future slipping away with each second that ticked by.
“Huh.” Bouncer tilted her head, leaned her butt against the table.
“Huh good or huh bad?” Rojas asked.
“Huh as in—” She grabbed a red marker, circled the first deposit date, then walked over to James Van Keltin’s board and circled the date his home had been burgled.
“I don’t get it,” Peyton said.
“Not done.” She circled the second date on the time line, then Herman Goodwin’s theft. Third, Charles Baker. Fourth, Lance Swendon. Fifth, Cunningham.
“About a week apart between the burglaries and the deposits,” Gage said. “You’re thinking Morgan’s money came from Nemesis.” He’d rather she’d have been working for the cartel.
“I’m looking at the information we have,” Bouncer said. “But no one in this room believes in coincidences.”
Gage didn’t. “There’s been something foggy in this case, something I know we should have been seeing from the beginning.” The only time his pulse pounded this way, as if keeping time to a Rose Parade marching band, was when he was onto something. Morgan and Nemesis? All this time she’d known how important this case was to him, what was riding on it.
He needed to focus on what he could see, not what he was afraid to feel.
“Let’s go back to the original statements the victims made after the burglaries. The ones they recanted.”
They dived at the files littering the table like Olympians at a swim trial. Once all nine files were in hand, they lined them up in chronological order on the table.
Gage pulled down the photographs of the safes and studies, wherever items had been stolen from, and placed them above each report.
The elevator dinged and Gage frowned at the distraction. “Sorry,” Bouncer said. “I ordered lunch before the shit hit the fan. I’ll get it. Hey, Rojas, I’m short on cash,”
“Yeah.” Rojas took out his wallet, tossed her two twenties. Gage shoved them toward her.
“Cash,” he whispered, his gaze flying across each photo as he pointed at Bouncer. “The other day you said something about cash—”
“Yeah. There was a bunch left at the Swarthmore estate,” she said as she hopped out of the room with the money and called, “Nemesis didn’t touch it.”
“Nemesis left the cash.” Gage circled around to the other side of the time-line board, snapped the Swarthmore crime photo off, and set it with the others. “Cash left behind. And here. Grant Alvers. That’s got to be at least a hundred grand sitting right there. What’s it still doing there?”
“Crockets, too,” Rojas confirmed, circling the money with a permanent marker. “Stack at the front of the safe.”
Peyton peered at the other photos on the board. “Is cash listed as stolen on the Fitzgerald case?”
“Ummmm, no.” Rojas picked up the picture from the table. “Can’t see much on this one.”
“You can here.” Peyton tapped his finger on the closeup of the safe. “Looks about the right size for a stack of cash, right?”
Both Rojas and Gage peered closer. “Yeah,” Rojas said. “Yeah, it does, and here. Lance Swendon.”
“Charles Baker and—” Gage put a big red circle on the last picture. “James Van Keltin.”
“And none of them listed the stolen cash on their retracted statements,” Peyton confirmed.
“Why does everything circle to Van Keltin?” Gage wondered.
“How does any of this help Morgan?” Rojas asked.
“Getting there,” Gage said. “I want both of you on the phones with Swendon, Baker, and Goodwin. Tell them we don’t care about false statements or even if they lied before, but ask them the simple yes or no question: Was any cash stolen the night they were robbed. That’s all we need right now. If I’m right, that’ll be enough to stop Kolfax.”
“Gage.” Evan stuck his head in the door. “Judge blew his game, came back to the office early. Warrant’s been issued.”
“She’s out of time,” Peyton said.
“Shit.” Gage’s mind spun. The second Kolfax arrested Morgan, there was no getting her back. Kolfax would parade her on the evening news and all over the Internet to showcase his success over a once-blown case. They were so close . . . “Shit.” He scrubbed his hands down his face. “Shit. Shit. Shit. We don’t have another choice. Bouncer.” He pointed at her as she returned with two huge paper bags of food. “You and Peyton with me. Rojas, you make those calls and get the answers we need. Evan, call in every favor you have with a judge.”
“What for?” Evan called as Bouncer and Peyton followed him to the elevator.
“An arrest warrant for Morgan Tremayne.”